Entertainment

Hulu Unlikely to Run on Google TV

Google TV has arrived and will begin bringing the Internet into living rooms this fall, but we are all wondering: Can it play Hulu?

For the last few days, I've been testing out Adobe Flash 10.1 for Android. While almost every Flash website worked for us, Hulu did not. When we questioned Adobe on the issue, the company told us that it wasn't a technical issue, but a licensing one.

Hulu is unique in that its content is restricted by a multitude of licensing deals with major networks. That's why only certain episodes are available on Hulu and why it isn't available internationally. That's also why Hulu doesn't work on Android; Hulu only has licensing rights for the desktop.

We pressed Google and Adobe about whether Hulu would work on Google TV, given that it doesn't work on Android. Google VP of Engineering Vic Gundotra responded by saying that Google TV and Flash 10.1 are technically capable and ready to run Flash on your TV screen. However, the final decision of whether to allow content to run on a platform like Google TV resides with the content provider.

Given Gundotra's response, we doubt that Hulu will work on Google TV when it launches this fall. Hulu makes less money streaming a TV show to you than it does showing it to you through cable or satellite — the rates are simply higher and the volume of ads are simply larger on TV itself.

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